week of January 29 - February 4, 2007

A Man With No Teeth Serves Us Breakfast | I'd Like to Bake Your Goods | Stolen Mummies | Brendan Constantine is My Kind of Town
Up Liberty's Skirt | Feeding Holy Cats | Mowing Fargo | I'm a Jew, Are You? | Lizard King of the Laundromat | I Am My Own Orange County
Paris: It's The Cheese | Poetry Super Highway | Judaic Links | Rick's Bookmarks | Cobalt Poets
E-mail Rick | Other Cool Rick Stuff / Upcoming Readings | Who The Hell Is Rick

Sus Scrofa There you are large-eyed floppy-eared pink, white. You are clever, bright as any child. Disposition of a three-year-old human Inquisitive, you can learn to play video games. Some of you have rescued humans from drowning. When you dream, you dream of sun of rolling, to cool yourself, in mud. Things you will never see, things you will never do. You are trapped in a dark warehouse no fresh air you must stand in ammonia and your own waste. You are trapped, your fate decided before you were born because humans "just love" you, love to raise you: You are first separated from your mother, then, tied to a bar, unable to sit, to lie down, or even turn around. Your legs will hurt, constantly. You'll do whatever it is that animals do that feels like praying. Each time you see a human, you'll think "Maybe he'll let me move, I want to move." And you'll have teeth pulled, so in your frustration you won't hurt yourself. The humans will pull out some of your teeth, with no anesthesia--- this is their solution for a better life for you. If you're a male, they'll castrate you, with no anesthesia. All of you will be fattened for the kill, and when they come for you, hormones will race through your bloodstream. You'll feel fear. You'll scream, but no one will hear you. You'll see others, just like you, strung up, some still conscious, skinned alive. You'll cry the tears an animal cries and think "How can I escape?" "I cannot get away." Soon after, after your soft hair and smooth skin are sliced off, and your body chopped, chopped they'll eat you. They will comment on how tender and sweet you are and never see the irony. August 6th, 2004. Grief There are photographs of a sweet-faced, ratty mother dog her pups and me, my hands on all of them. My mother told me how when we returned to Indiana there were no puppies. How a great-grandfather packed them up like oranges in a sack weighted with bricks or maybe it was rocks, bricks would have been too valuable. I hope that mother dog was not witness when Pap-Paw tossed the sack full of three month old puppies they probably screamed whatever screaming sounds like when puppies scream as they descended down to the bottom of the pond. After that the mother dog would walk to the pond stare at it circle the edge perhaps she knew or guessed or simply caught their scent. This is the poem I'll write when I lose my mother I'll see myself there at the bottom lost, water rushing in.

Getting Lucky I saw the old moon in the riverpark tonight, sitting on a bench beside the path. He wore a scruffy Tigers cap and a tan raincoat. He seemed to be waiting for someone, but not the young lovers who walked by; he ignored them, as he did the boy pulled along by his Labrador, and a number of others. Then I saw her jog briskly around the bend toward him; he stood, opened his raincoat, and flashed her. She paused, looked intently, smiled, then took his hand and led him off, to her apartment, I'm sure, where he spent the rest of his last night -- the old moon, wrapped warmly in the new moon's thighs.